Blogging Present.ly

Present.ly is pleased to announce the Computer Security Institute (CSI), a prestigious community of world-renowned security experts and professionals, has chosen us to be their official Micro-blogging technology provider for all their web and mobile-based collaboration and communication needs.

At the forefront of security trends and research, CSI provides a forum for security professionals to learn, share and debate the latest thinking on security strategies and technologies.

In September, at the O'Reilly/TechWeb Web 2.0 Expo, Robert Richardson, the Director of the Computer Security Institute, handpicked and dubbed Present.ly the "safe and secure business alternative to mainstream social media tools Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter." Robert, who had evaluated a number of different social media vendors, and is extremely familiar with the space, immediately recognized the positive and distinguishing characteristics of the Present.ly design, including: advance security & permission controls, group functionality, Twitter interoperability, file sharing, an open API, scalability, and an appealing interface --- all of which are of great value to his audience.

Starting on Saturday, November 15th, members of the CSI organization will gather for their Annual Event, where registered attendees, corporate guests and other interested parties, will have a full-access-pass to their very own customized instance of Present.ly. The week-long event, which will be held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center (just outside of Washington, DC), is expected to draw 3,000 people, from over 40 countries, and will offer an opportunity for CSOs, CTOs, CIOs and alike to gain an understanding of both the technical aspects of security, and how security fits into their overall business and strategic plans.

The CSI Present.ly community will be used to assist individuals with finding like-minded people, relevant information and materials; tracking topic sessions, speakers, and exhibitors; as well as fostering continued conversations after the event is over.

Team Present.ly is very excited about this project and looks forward to our continued relationship with CSI.

Please contact csi@intridea.com if you have any questions or feedback.

Since we launched, we’ve been hoping to find a better way to handle support requests and documentation. We think we’ve finally found a better solution and are pleased to unveil the brand-new Present.ly support site: http://support.presentlyapp.com/.

The new site allows for public discussion threads as well as a searchable knowledge base that we will be adding to rapidly to help newcomers and old pros alike in being able to better use Present.ly.

We look forward to hearing your suggestions and being able to communicate with you more directly. Thanks!

Today marks the availability of a large number of new features that we’ve been working on for the past weeks to improve your user experience with Present.ly. We hope you find the improvements useful.

New Signup Options

We wanted to give people more flexibility with how users can sign up for accounts. With that in mind, there are now four “signup methods” that you can choose for your accounts:

• Closed: This is the same as the old method; the only way to create a new user is by direct invitation of an administrator. This is also the default option, so no existing accounts will change.
• Access Code: For events and other more open environments, you can use this method to provide an access code that people may use to sign up for the account. Anyone with the code can directly create an account by visiting your account’s subdomain.
• Domain: This allows you to specify an e-mail domain to always allow signups through, even without an invitation. This makes it easy to spread Present.ly within a company. Of course, administrators can still add people to the account that do not have the specified e-mail domain.
• Open: The final option is completely open sign up. Anyone who visits your account subdomain will be able to sign up for an account.

We think that these options will help Present.ly fit the flow of more businesses as well as make it easier for events and other more organic groups to form accounts.

New Customization Options

We want Present.ly to fit with your company perfectly. To that end, we’ve added some new features that make it easier to customize your account to fit your company.

Company Logo: You can now upload your company logo to your account. It will display in the header of your account when logged in and also above the login fields when logged out.

New Theme: We’ve added a new theme to give you greater choice in how your account looks. Just choose ‘Gloss’ from the Account Settings page and you can use it!

Custom Styles: You can also now add custom CSS to your account by selecting the ‘Custom’ theme and adding any CSS you would like. It will be added after all of Present.ly’s default styles.

But Wait, There’s More!

Suggest: If you start typing a user or group name (with an @) or a tag name (with a #) a dialog will come up as you type to help you select what you’re looking for.

Quick Login: You can now jump to the login page for your account from the Present.ly home page. If your e-mail address is on multiple accounts, it will let you choose which one you want to access.

Contextual Privacy Help: We know that getting used to @-replies, direct messages, and the other shortforms used by Present.ly can be a bit overwhelming. To help you out, we’ve added some contextual help that will let you know who your update will be seen by once you post it.

Group Discussion Sidebar: If you’re on a group profile page, you can now send messages to members of the group simply by typing updates in the sidebar. This gives you an easy way to focus on a specific group within the application.

More Informative IMs: Instant messaging notifications will now indicate when a message is a direct message to you as well as some other useful information.

Performance Improvements: We have also released a number of performance improvements designed to make the site run faster. We will be continuing to improve performance in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

We hope you enjoy all of the great new features Present.ly has to offer, and stay tuned for even more in the coming weeks.

This is something that’s been cooking for a while and it’s finally live! If you’re a user of GitHub, the fantastic Git repository hosting service (and open-source megasite), you can now integrate your GitHub commits with Present.ly! Take a look:

Integration is super-easy and can be used in a number of ways. To integrate, just go to the “Admin” section of your GitHub repository and then click on “Services”

From here, you can scroll down to find “Presently” as one of the service integration options. Simply fill out the information, check “Active” and save. You’re ready to go!

The best thing is how it can integrate with Present.ly’s groups functionality. There are three things you can do with the Group Name option:

• Leave it blank. When commits are pushed to the repository, an update will be posted from your account with the information.
• Use a Group Name. If you are the manager of a group, you can put the short name of the group in this field and commits will be broadcast by the group as in the screenshot above.
• System Broadcast. If you are the administrator of a Present.ly account, you can type “system” in the Group Name field and a system broadcast will be generated upon commits being pushed to the repository.

We think this is a fantastic way to keep teams up to date on what’s happening with a project, and we’re happy to be able to share it with you!