The Rock Your Firefox wiki page outlines some of the detail of the program but here on our post we wanted to highlight the stated goals:

• Share at least three add-on reviews a week- every Mon/Wed/Fri
• Invite the Firefox user community to contribute to Rock Your Firefox via comments, suggestions, or guest blogs
• Provide add-ons developers with a way to get rich user feedback about their add-ons
• Provide a consumer-friendly channel for add-on distribution

The last two are of particular interest to us – we’re always trying to gather, analyze and act on as much user feedback as we can get via our support site powered by Get Satisfaction, Twitter, our Facebook Fan Page and more, so we’re looking forward to getting additional feedback from Firefox users.  The last bullet highlights something we’re excited to see the Mozilla team tackling – delivering a consumer friendly channel for add-ons distribution.  The Firefox add-ons directory is fantastic and getting better and better but that said, can be a bit intimidating for the first time user looking to dive (or perhaps tip toe) into the add-ons experience.  The approach of filtering the directory and presenting popular and user friendly add-ons via Rock Your Firefox strikes us as a great next step in expanding the add-ons audience to an even bigger segment of the Firefox user base.

You can follow RockYourFirefox on Twitter to get the latest updates.   Thanks again to the Mozilla team – we’re excited to get even more users rocking their Firefox with Yoono!

The Yoono Team

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One common point of feedback we get on our sidebar add-on version is that some users don’t want to have the sidebar open and constraining their viewing area for web content.  We get it – sometimes we feel the same way, especially on our laptop screens for example.  Yoono is very easy to minimize and you still are notified when new updates come in – check it out:

For a long time we didn’t have spell check.  Users frequently requested it.  And misspelled stuff.  We added it.  That was easy, no?  Simply right click on a word that you spelled incorrectly and you’re given a a few options of the correct spelling – check out this screencast:

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The major new feature with these releases is the addition of multi-column view in both our add-on and desktop versions.  We think the add-on version is pretty innovative, displaying columns in their own browser tab that doesn’t get in the way of your browsing but allows easy access within your browser.  In our desktop version, the integration of a mini browser that allows you to view links in your stream and easily share them set it apart as a social media browsing tool versus other desktop clients.  For those who prefer single column view, don’t worry!  We’ve left our single column mode in tact and you can access everything you need in single column.  So you have the best of both worlds and can use Yoono in whichever way suits you.

We also wanted to share some public stats that we’re really excited about.  The key takeaway?  If you love Yoono, you’re not alone – we’ve grown dramatically in the last 6 months and our goal is to accelerate that growth even more in 2010 by making our product even better.  Here’s a few stats:

• In the Firefox add-ons directory, Yoono gets more downloads per week (~50K) than the StumbleUpon, Facebook, and Digg toolbars combined – that data is publicly available in the Firefox Add-ons directory

As for what’s coming next, we are actively working on expanding Yoono to new platforms – iPhone/iPod touch/iPad being the top priority as well as working with Google on an extension for Chrome.  In addition, we’ll be expanding our supported networks to include Google Buzz, YouTube, Yammer, and Facebook Chat in the near future.  Have something you’d like to see in Yoono?  Tell us here.

Finally, a special thanks to all of our users who enthusiastically tested our beta versions – you gave us some great feedback!  We’ve taken much of it into account in the final versions of Yoono 7.1 for firefox and Yoono Desktop 1.6 beta for Windows, Mac and Linux.  We’ve also got a lot of feedback to consider for future releases so thanks again – you guys are awesome.

Enjoy!

The Yoono Team

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Yoono 7.1 makes it easy to mark updates as read, clear them from view and increase the size of text for better readability. We’ve also introduced multi-column view so you can view updates from many networks across multiple columns without switching tabs in Yoono for various networks.

If you have a question or piece of feedback, please connect with us at http://support.yoono.com so we can use your valuable feedback to improve our product. Without further ado, let’s get started!

Let’s start by discussing the UI of Yoono 7.1 and how it displays unread updates.

As you can see from the image above, each network has an icon. Twitter accounts (I have 5 of them) are signified with a small Twitter icon in the bottom left hand corner. Facebook, Flickr, AIM and other networks are pretty easy to see because their icons are recognizable.

Red Numbers: Signify unread updates. These can be updates from friends, photo uploads, new IM conversations, Twitter replies, DMs and Facebook messages. All has the number 567 and that’s calculated based on the unread updates from all networks combined.

Blue Numbers: Signify search results. Blue is tied to Twitter search results. In Yoono, you can search Twitter and save those search results so Yoono will search and show you a number of new updates. For example, I have the Twitter account for Yoono set to search “yoono” on Twitter and there are 9 new mentions of our application since the last time I refreshed.

We don’t count higher than 999 updates given the limited space available in our sidebar’s interface. When any one of the networks reaches 999 unread updates, the number will go no higher. How do you “read” updates to reduce the count signified in the red boxed text? It’s pretty easy.

As you can see in the image below, unread updates are “yellow”

After 3 seconds of sitting on this current screen, those updates will fade from yellow to white and the unread count will drop since those have been read. Of course, having 900 of these will take a while and we don’t expect you to scroll all day to mark all of these as read. Yoono 7 and Yoono 7.1 are pretty similar in how you mark all as read or clear all updates from view but we’ve improved the UI a bit in the latest version.

In Yoono 7, simply right click on any of the tabs that show unread updates and click “mark all as read” The red numbers go away and the yellow updates all become white. Below, is how you do it in Yoono 7.1

All Tab:

As you can see, I can mark all as read or remove all from this list. Marking all as read clears the yellow highlight on all updates in all tabs and removes the red numbers.  On a related note, you’ll see that you can now filter the view to show you only unread (select “All unread updates”) so you can skip things you’ve already read and focus on new items.

If you simply want to mark all as read on a single network, that’s possible as well. Take Facebook for example. The drop down arrow shows up on the “Updates” tab, messages tab and notifications tab depending on which one is selected. We make it easy to fine tune what you mark as read.

Note that when you select “mark all as read” for the updates stream it doesn’t always mark all network features as read – we’ve done this on purpose to make sure you see important items like Twitter Direct Messages.  After clicking mark all as read on all networks, see before and after screen shots:

Before:

After:

Notice that there are still a few unread notifications. By marking all as read, Twitter replies & DMs are not marked. We consider these important enough to not be marked as read because these are updates directed at you specifically and not updates from your friends that are going to everyone generally. The same rule applies if you have any Facebook messages that are unread. Also notice that the search result that I have saved under the Yoono Twitter account is still showing 9 new updates. We also feel saved search results should be prioritized to show as “unread” even after you click mark all as read.

Overall, we hope this approach meets the needs of our users and it’s been implemented this way as the result of direct user feedback.

You can also “remove all from this list” which will clear all of the updates from the list. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Before:

After:

As you can see, all of the updates (aside from replies and search results) have been removed from view and in the all tab, it shows “You have new new updates!” This is a great way to start clean with a simple view free of any updates. If you want to remove a single update or notification, you can now hover over an update and a trash can icon appears in the lower right. (shown below).

Clicking the trash can removes that update. Remember, the update will still be on Twitter.com or whichever service it came from, you’re just telling Yoono to hide it from view.

Finally, on a semi-related note, Yoono has a new feature that enables you to tweak the size of text in Yoono so that you can make the updates stream font size best suit your individual needs.  We’ve had a lot of feedback on this point and are happy to finally be able to provide this functionality to our users!

———-

These are a few of the ways to help you manage notifications and unread messages better in Yoono. We’ve made great strides in the past few months that makes it easier to find updates, manage updates and stay up to date with your social circle without the headache or being overwhelmed by information overload. As always, we welcome feedback and comments!

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Today, we’re pleased to announce the next version of Yoono Desktop with some exciting new features! Please keep in mind, we’re only releasing the public beta of version 1.6 and the final version will be out shortly but we’re so excited about the enhancements to this version that we just could just couldn’t wait to share it with you!

Yoono Desktop 1.6 w/ Multi-Column View

What’s New in Yoono Desktop 1.6 Beta:

• Multi-Column Support (An easier way to keep track of what matters to you across multiple networks without clicking around)
• Improved UI Elements and usability (Small tweaks and changes that improve the experience and overall usability for new and existing users)
• Linux Support (For the first time, you can run Yoono Desktop on your Linux powered computer natively)
• Performance Improvements (Each version of Yoono runs faster and smoother on older computers. This version is no different)
• Changes to how we connect to LinkedIN that improve security and reduce connection issues
• By popular demand, the old style retweet is now available again (Look for “Edit and Retweet” in the “more” section of the update)
• Easier controls for viewing unread updates and marking all updates as read or clearing all updates for a clean slate

We’re pleased to share this with the community and hope you’ll provide us with feedback so we can continue to improve all of our applications. Yoono Desktop is a free download and available via the links below.

Yoono Desktop 1.6 Beta for Windows

Yoono Desktop 1.6 Beta for Mac OS X

Yoono Desktop 1.6 Beta for Linux

Yoono Desktop Portable (USB)

—————————

For News & Updates on Yoono, be sure to connect with us via the networks below:

• Twitter
• Facebook

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Update: We’ve released Beta 2 of version 7.1. This is a public build and further enhances the next version of Yoono with bug fixes and changes based on the feedback from the community. You can download Beta 2 here: Download Here

Looking back at the last 12 months at Yoono it is clear that we have had a phenomenal year. Our product has evolved and changed quite a bit in this timeframe. We released Version 7 last month and have since pushed out 9 small updates with bug fixes and enhancements in response to community feedback. Since version 7 was released, we’ve been hard at work on 7.1 because we couldn’t fit everything in version 7 on time and there are so many great ideas that we want to implement.

Aside from small tweaks and a few enhancements, the killer feature in version 7.1 is a new multi-column view. The new feature enables you to be in more than one place at once (figuratively of course) and have a handle on what everyone is doing without clicking around in a single-column orientation. From our blog post announcing this feature last week:

multi-column clients allow you to set up a series of vertical columns all viewable simultaneously and displaying things like all your Twitter mentions, Direct Messages, or the results for a particular Twitter search term.  The effect is one of a social media “dashboard” that gives you at-a-glance access to a lot of data flowing through your real time social stream.

We’re incredibly excited to be including this feature in our next release. The feature is mostly aimed at power users who want access to many data points without changing gears (clicking various tabs in Yoono) but you can opt to turn on multi-column by simply clicking a dedicated button at the bottom of the Firefox Add-On.

The small column-esque button turns your browser view into an array of columns and you have full customization options to display Twitter & Facebook side by side or a saved Twitter Search. AIM gets its own column and so does Flickr. In a basic configuration of Yoono with all 10 of our services added, there are 1,681 different configuration options available to you and this is pretty monumental because, prior to version 7.1, you only had 1 option to customize how Yoono displays data.

The same feature will be included in the next version of Yoono Desktop which is a cross-platform version of Yoono for Mac & PC. Yoono Desktop will be ready for Linux very soon and will also include multi-column support.

DOWNLOAD INFO:

We are only accepting 5,000 beta users at this time. I don’t have an ETA on when this will be released to the public but you can try Yoono 7.1 Beta 2 today via our Mozilla Add-Ons Page. Alternatively, simply click HERE to download the add-on for Mozilla Firefox.

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For Yoono, the Intel AppUp store is a great new distribution channel that allows us to reach the large and rapidly growing netbook user base with our all-in-on social media app.  The support from the Intel team has been amazing and we consider ourselves very lucky to be one of a handful featured apps (and one of only 2 mentioned in the keynote!).  We think Yoono’s slim form factor and resource usage make it a great fit for the netbook platform – if you have a netbook, check it out!

Here are a few pictures, a short video clip taken by our very own Regan Fletcher during the keynote, and Regan on Yoono joining the Intel Atom Developers Program:

Title at the top says it all, don’t you think?

Yoono on the netbooks at the Netbook Kiosk in the Intel booth:


Amateur auteur and Yoono employee Regan Fletcher’s video of Otellini’s keynote:

Regan on participating in the Intel Atom Developer’s program:

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One of the key reasons we have not implemented this feature sooner is that this multi-column view has in our estimation been largely a “power user” view and we didn’t want it to over-complicate the new user experience for most users.  While we still believe there is some truth in that view, we also are not ones to ignore user feedback or the general direction of the market for real time social stream applications.  Given this, we’ll shortly be launching multi-column support aka “dashboard view” for both our Firefox add-on and our Yoono Desktop clients.  We’ve been playing around with it internally and if you’re a fan of the dashboard view we think you’re going to love it!  We’ll get it to you as soon as possible and then listen carefully to your feedback to make it better.  Here’s a preview (Desktop version):

A key point is we haven’t changed our integrated single column view, which we believe is the best in the business, to accomodate multi-column.  Single column remains the default but multi-column will be an option so that  effectively you get the best of both worlds depending on your preference.  With unique features like support for multiple Facebook and MySpace accounts (not just Twitter like most clients), support for instant messaging columns, and browser integration on both Yoono for Firefox (obviously!) and Yoono Desktop, we think you’ll find it innovative and more importantly very easy to use.

Stay tuned!

The Yoono Team

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In today’s Yoono Tips post, we cover an advanced tip that allows you to show or hide someone’s updates quickly and easily. If you have a friend who you don’t want to unfollow or unfriend but who you’d rather not see updates from, simply hide them for a bit (you can easily unhide them as well). This comes in handy on days when someone is at an event or simply updating way too much.

You can take this one step further by actually hiding Facebook application updates that sometimes show up in the stream of updates. I’m sure you’ve seen Mafia Wars updates a few too many times on Facebook and within Yoono (who hasn’t??).   Time to hide those forever.

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