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Changes to weblogs.asp.net post sorting

You may notice that the sorting on http://weblogs.asp.net isn't strictly chronological anymore. Scott wrote up a post that details why this is.

The short version is that there is now an algorithm (Digg inspired) that sorts the posts based on relevance. New posts start on the top but to stay on top the post follows a weighted algorithm based on age, comments, views, rating, etc.

We're using this on weblogs.asp.net now — if you've got feedback let us know!

Forrester Research for Blogging Platforms is Published

Forrester Research published their Q2 2006 Forrester Wave report. Community Server was one of the blogging platforms evaluated.

We’re a relatively young contender to the space, but our initial participation in an analyst process seems to have gone well, “Telligent Provides A Strong, Community-Based Blogging Platform”.

We gave this some more coverage over at communityserver.org, but I thought I’d mention it here because out of the 9 platforms evaluated (Movable Type, WordPress, Drupal, etc.) Community Server was the only offering built on .NET.

Welcome Ryan Hoffman, Telligent Intern

Ryan Hoffman is the first official intern of Telligent! You can follow Ryan’s blog here:

http://extended64.com/blogs/rhoffman/default.aspx

For those of you that don’t know Ryan is heavily involved in several well known Community Sites, such as bink.nu and extended64.com.

While we can’t say exactly what Ryan is going to be working on while he is here, suffice to say that it’s a new product we’re working on and it’s going to be wicked cool (how is that for a teaser)!

Vic Gundotra off to Google

I worked with Vic briefly during my Developer Relations Group (DRG) time as an evangelist at Microsoft during the late 1990s. Vic was one of the pioneering drivers behind the evangelism teams at Microsoft and was the guy ultimately responsible for sites like channel9.msdn.com and who Scoble rolled up to. Simply put, Vic ‘gets’ community and ‘gets’ how to create fans for the products he works on.

From the C-NET article it sounds like Vic is taking a year off and then joining Google. A lot changes in a year — personally I don’t know if I could sit still that long!

The who’s who list for Google is getting pretty silly. I guess it’s the, “throw a bunch of smart people together, give them atonomy (and cash), and then sit back and watch’. I like that…

Good luck at Google Vic!

Telligent turns 2

It’s hard to believe, but on June 1st 2006 Telligent turned 2 years old! To celebrate we brought in some of our team in from out-of-town, held a half-day company meeting, and then took over a section of a restraunt for a nice dinner. The night was also a celebration of some amazing achievements the CodeSmith team has accomplished.

I’ve posted some photos from the dinner here:

http://communityserver.org/photos/rhoward/tags/2006+Company+Meeting/default.aspx

The last 2 years have been absolutely amazing. We’ve built 3 versions of the Community Server platform, acquired another software product, formed a new venture with Eric Smith (CodeSmith Tools, LLC), built a number of amazing implementations of Community Server (most recently for MSNBC: cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com) and I still feel like we’re just getting started!

We’ve got some exciting new plans in the works too: we’re currently building 3 new exciting products, two of which will likely come out early 2007, Community Server 2.1 (used on this site) will be released in the next 6 weeks, and we have recently launched a new business, Sound Hires; a new .NET services business focusing on local markets.

I’d personally like to say thank you to the people at Telligent and CodeSmith; I’m continually amazed at what you have been able to accomplish. Also, to everyone who has used our free or commercial products and services, thank you. We’ve come a long way from the days of .Text, nGallery, and ASP.NET Forums, but as the recent Forrester research reports says, ‘Telligent Provides A Strong, Community-Based Blogging Platform‘. Yes, we’re excited about the progress we’ve made, but we still have a long, long ways to go. Stick around, I think you’ll like what is coming!

Dallas, TX CodeCamp

The Dallas, TX CodeCamp is this Saturday June 24th 2006 at the Microsoft Dallas office.

Lots of great content is on tap — I’ll be providing a presentation on “Building interactive web communities”, i.e. an overview of Community Server. It’s the same session I gave at the Mix06 conference but this time we won’t even open PowerPoint.

Google Spreadsheets — is it ‘good enough’?

Paul Ballad and I had an interesting debate not so long ago about Smart Client vs. Browser based applications.

Google’s beta release of Google Spreadsheets is interesting as it relates to this discussion.

Will a browser based version of a spreadsheet tool be as good as Microsoft’s Excel? No, but the real question is: can it be good enough?

Think about it. Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. are all great applications – but how much of the functionality do you really use? 10 or 15 percent? I use Excel almost every day, but mainly for creating lists and as a simple database. The most complex calculations are usually sums and averages.

Tools such as web based email clients (Hotmail, GMail, etc.) are popular for just that reason; they are good enough, simple to use, and work anywhere. Google’s new spreadsheet offering may just be ‘good enough’ for a lot of people that use Excel for simple tasks and also quickly solves the problem of sharing an Excel spreadsheet.

www.iis.net is live!

Today Telligent helped launch a new community site: www.iis.net. The site is built using ASP.NET 2.0 and utilizes Community Server for its forums and blogs infrastructure. The site is also utilizing some awesome new portal and content management infrastructure and tools that will be available in the 3.0 version of Community Server.

Check it out!

weblogs.asp.net updated

Last night (Sunday, May 21st) http://weblogs.asp.net/ was updated to Community Server version 2.1.

This was a long overdue update, but it brings some great new features and capabilities (such as search and tags) to the site. We’ve also done a lot to make the content optimized for search engines.

There are still a few issues to iron out, but overall the update went smoothly. If you’re a blogger on this site you should have an email from Alex Lowe about the upgrade. Please let him know if you run into any problems.