This comes with several improvements to the way messages are edited and displayed. In addition to inline display of images using the img tag, we have also added the HTML tags u, center, and pre, in addition to the already existing support for b, i, and a. blockquote can be used as blockquote, bq, or quote. When pre is used, any HTML tags within are escaped, so you can now display snippets of code and other previously impossible text without losing formatting. For instance, here is an example of an image tag:

<img src="http://kradmeme.local/meme_tail.gif" alt="Optional description">

Image tags can be justified left or right using the align attribute so text wraps around them, such as the image in this post. All implemented tags support standard HTML attributes to the degree we support the attributes.

When posting, the interface now displays error messages in realtime about formatting problems above the edit window. Eventually we will have this functionality include better information about to what types of HTML is allowed and how it can be used. In general, the system will display posts better and more uniformly. It is no longer so ridged about spacing after quotes, posts will now display properly regardless of if you have a newline after a quote or not. Characters such as > and < can now be used in posts without being part of an HTML tag as well.

Any Google/YouTube/Revver videos that are primary links will be displayed automatically at the top of the post. Videos can also be displayed inline with a tag like this:

<video url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2f4heaG288" alt="Optional description">

We will add other video services as we become aware of them. Let us know if there is a service you would like us to support.

We would like to single out Acidus for praise. His help made this update happen. We are very excited to have him actively involved with MemeStreams developlment. His work is present in several aspects of this update, such as the on-the-fly picture resizing and the realtime post validity checking. Be sure to tell him how much he kicks ass. We have never worked with anyone better when it comes to web security and javascript.

Be sure to tell terratogen he kicks ass as well. For years now, he has been providing us with with all our graphic design needs. You can see his work in the site's logo and the various graphical icons used throughout the site.

As always, if you encounter any problems, let Rattle or Decius know. More information and site updates are on the way.

MemeStreams Update: Now More Sexy!

I just posted a minor update to MemeStreams. There were a number of circles in MemeStreams that were broken. Many did not have names. These have all been deleted. If you did not have any circles before, you now have three: Co-Workers, Friends, and Interesting People, which are the same three that new users now get automatically. If you had circles before, your circles should not have changed. Please let me know if you observe any problems with these changes.

Happy New Year everyone.

At the start of each year I've traditionally posted the previous year's awstat web server statistics. This year I'm doing something different. There are three reasons.

The first is that posting awstat information contributes to a lot of referral spam. In fact, I'll bet this post will end up getting picked up by spammers in web searches and sent a lot of bogus traffic simply because the text awstats appears within it. I have no idea what these people think they are accomplishing, but they seem quite persistent. Sanitizing the stats information so that it doesn't attract them has become a fair amount of work.

The second reason is that the statistics that are individually important to you probably haven't changed much from last year. Kimbo Slice is still the top search term that brings people in from Google...

What has changed is our Google rank. We've gone from about 40,000 monthly unique visitors in the earlier part of the year down to about 20,000, with a slight bump at the very end of December from people looking for information on the execution of Saddam Hussein. This is about where we were in 2005 prior to a national press incident involving one of our users. Nearly all of this traffic change can be attributed to Google. I'm not terribly bothered about it, as there are still an awful lot of people randomly falling in here from Google, and a reduction in our rank shelters us from link spam to a certain extent.

The third reason is that awstats information hasn't traditionally told us what we really want to know: How many people REALLY read MemeStreams. 20,000 or 40,000 is a heck of a lot of people. Mixed up in those statistics are the Google tourists, web crawlers, spammers, etc... How much of it can be discounted?

Rattle made two changes that help tremendously in understanding this question. The first was improvements to the sessions layer, which provides the information boxes you now see around the site that tell you who is currently online in 15 minute intervals. The second is the addition of Google Analytics, which includes a visitor loyalty statistic that I think provides the most accurate view of the size of the real MemeStreams reader community that we've yet seen. Unfortunately, these statistics exclude RSS readers. Its difficult to make accurate estimates about RSS readership, but we do know that the main page and the blogs of most of the regular posters on MemeStreams are pulled by RSS readers thousands of times a month. Given the frequency of RSS, however, that may represent less than 100 readers. Here are our visitor loyalty statistics for the month of December:

Visit Number Visits
1 14353
2 623
3 169
4 124
5 95
6 76
7 72
8 61
9-14 304
15-25 404
26-50 452
51-100 473
101-200 231
201+ 17

This chart shows how many people have visited the site a particular number of times... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

MemeStreams was first opened to the public on December 5th, 2001, so December 5th, 2006 was MemeStreams' 5th birthday. I'm sorry I didn't think of this until now. We're certainly not the media moguls that we thought we'd be when we started this thing, but its kept our attention and interest for a long time mostly because of all of the other people who hang out here who have interesting things to say and contribute. We thank all of you for being a part of it. Here's to another interesting 5 years!

The User Weblogs page has been updated to include pictures and more information. There is a link to hide details that gives the old view of the page.

The session tracking has been updated to only see users and guests as present on the site if they have viewed a page in the last 15 minutes. Online status is noted underneath user pictures if users are online.

MemeStreams Update - User Weblogs Page & Session Tracking

Further tweaks to the picture system have been made. Any pictures posted from this point forward will be higher quality. We may go through the existing posted picture and improve their quality as well..

Improvements have been made to searching. The search box on the upper right side of the screen is now contextual. Searches will be preformed on the content you are currently viewing. If you search from a user's blog, the search results will be from that user's blog. If you search in the agent, you will search the current group of users being viewed. Searches can be widened to the entire system at any time by clicking the "Search MemeStreams" button.

More performance tweaks to search are on the way... As are more picture capabilities. Sometime in the next few days, pictures will also start to appear in other pages on the system.

Enjoy!

MemeStreams Update - Improvements to pictures and search

The Social Network section of the site has been updated. It now only produces graphs and statistics using data from the past month. The stats are more informative and include pictures. The graphs are not pure noise.

The Most Recommended Users page remains not quite as useful

There is still much room for improvement, but that portion of the site is actually useful now.

MemeStreams Update - Social Network

We have begun pushing out a series of upgrades to MemeStreams. Some new features will be working their way into the site over the next few days.

We are pleased to announce that user profiles have gotten a much needed makeover. Among the changes, is the ability to post pictures.

Currently pictures are only displayed in user profiles and on user blogs. As we start rolling out more features, pictures will appear in more places.

Enjoy!

MemeStreams Update - New Profiles & Pictures

The following is a draft of the new MemeStreams Privacy Policy.

We will leave this up for public review until Tuesday. We would very much like to hear your feedback before making it official. If you don't have any objections, we would still like to hear a "looks good to me comment".. We want to make sure that we have full community involvement in crafting any site policy.

There is little change in substance and spirit between this version and the current privacy policy. This rewrite is mostly to clarify things, be easier to read, and have the necessary statements in place to satisfy requirements for working with advertising partners.

MemeStreams is designed to enable you to share information with other Internet users about web sites you find interesting. All of the information collected by the system is intended to be published, except where specifically noted.

If you are concerned about the information you publish, we recommend that you publish your weblog under a pseudonym, and do not recommend web sites you do not want other people to know you are reading. Any information that you publish on your weblog or in your profile is available to others.

The people who run this site are concerned about privacy rights, and will make every endeavor to protect information that ought to be private. We will attempt to protect you, and inform you about how you can better protect yourself.

Your email address is private: MemeStreams makes you verify your email address when you create an account in order to be able to post. We must verify your email address because MemeStreams can be used to generate outbound emails. We will never sell your email address to spammers or share it with third parties. However, if you choose to publish your email address in your profile or in posts, others can obtain it.

Your click-through data is private: MemeStreams collects information about the websites you've visited from other user's weblogs. This information is used by our reputation system and search engine to improve results. We will not intentionally provide this information to any third party.

This website uses cookies: All users of this website are issued cookies. These cookies are used to associate transactions with user's accounts, as well as to gather statistical data on our visitors. This statistical data is used to gauge the size and nature of our readership, as well as target advertisements on the website. Third parties, such as our advertising partners, may also set cookies.

This website uses Javascript: MemeStreams uses Javascript to provide a more powerful end user experience, as well as to deliver advertisements and collect statistics. This website will not work properly unless Javascript is enabled in your web browser.

Disclosure of statistics... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

MemeStreams Privacy Policy Changes (Draft for public review)

As you can see we revamped the UI this evening. Hopefully you'll find this nicer to look at... There is only one functional change. The "Compose an Article" "feature" is gone. You simply click "Post." If you don't include a URL it will do the appropriate stuff. We've also opened up access to the "activity" meter. We've had that for a while but only admins could see it. The UI change opens up a bunch of screen real estate for us, which we plan to make use of soon... stay tuned...