Recently, a group of people in Oklahoma City used Yackall to coordinate a crowd sourced map during a recent blizzard. There is a write up about how the group used online technologies including Yackall over at rbbruce.com
At Openbeta3, I gave a presentation on doing a web-based startup in Oklahoma City. We had 5 minutes and 20 slides, one every 15 seconds. This was my first talk in this format. It was a bit rough, but fun. We also had a Yackall room up for the event. A good time was had by all.
It is once again time for another round of updates to Yackall. In this update we have created the ability to send an email from the site to tell others about the room. Adding people to the conversation just got easier. This will work in a public or private rooms. Along with sending a standard template the user has the ability to add a personal message. This will make it easy to invite others to the conversation.
The next feature that we added has been highly requested. It is the ability to manage users. You can now ban users from public and private rooms. Also we added the ability for admins and room owners to delete individual messages as well as for regular users to delete their own messages. This feature makes Yackall more usable as a public forum embedded on blogs and other websites.
More features coming soon!
We have added yet another great new feature to Yackall.
One of the items that we received in feedback was that there was little notification as to what was happening in the rooms. That if there was real-time notifications, people would be more inclined to join the conversation. We have responded with real-time email notification of any room that you own, are a member of, or subscribe to. Don’t worry, you will not be flooded with an email for every post made in a room. We keep track of who has be notified of recent updates and do not send another email for a set period of time.
To receive the email updates, please make sure that your email address is correct on the Settings page.
More updates will be released soon.
Couple of new features. First, on new members, we added the Twitter image to Yackall on the import from a users profile on Twitter. This was something that just needed to be done. Finally got around to adding it.
Second, when the profile import happens from Twitter, the users email address is not included. To take advantage of the notification and subscription features of Yackall, you will now need to go into Setting and update your email address.
We have also fixed several bugs that were reported by users.
What other features should we look at adding?
We have been busy the last couple of days getting a couple of new features ready. The first is the ability to embed a public room onto another web page. Now you don’t have to always go to Yackall.com to chat in your favorite rooms. This always allows Yackall chat rooms to be used in conjunction with other websites and events. You can embed a chat room on your homepage and have all your visitors take part in the conversation from your website. It also allows adding a Yackall chat room and a streaming video to the same page to allow a discussion about the video. You can set the height and width for whatever your needs are. We also added an RSS feed for public chat rooms that anybody can subscribe to. Both the RSS feed and the embed information for public rooms can be found on the right-hand side in the chatroom.
We are always looking for new ways to use Yackall’s unique feature set. Let us know how you use Yackall. info@yackall.com.
We have a couple of other announcements coming in the next week or so.
By popular demand, we have added an email digest update on room activity for any room that you are the owner of, subscribed to, or private room that you are a member of. You will receive an email at the end of the day on which rooms that you are interested have been updated during the day.
Thank you for you interest and use of Yackall. We are continuing to improve the product. Suggestions and feedback are always welcome.
It has been a busy couple of days here at the Yackall. The latest feature to be added to Yackall is the ability to subscribe with a users Twitter username and password. What does this mean? It means that it is even easier to take part in the conversations going on at Yackall. To activate your Twitter account on Yackall, just login with your Twitter Username and password and you are good to go. Our goal with this feature is to make it easier for the large group of Twitter users to move conversations from Twitter to Yackall.
If you don’t have a Twitter account already, don’t worry you can still create an unique Yackall account.
Head on over to Yackall.com to sign up. Keep up the Yacking!
Yackall now has a User Voice account. Got an idea or suggestion. You now have two options.
1. Post it in Yackall Feedback
2. Post it at Yackall’s User Voice
Yackall has always had Yackall Feedback Room, but want to offer our customers more. We feel that both options will provide a good method to receive feedback from our users. User Voice is a great service and we look forward to the benefits that they provide.
Yackall is proud to announce its official beta launch. We are very excited to turn this service loose in the wild. We will continue to improve and add new features over the next several months. We also are interested in feedback from our users. Be sure to check out the site from your smart phone or other WAP 2.0 compatible device as well as a standard web browser.
Yackall is a tool to facilitate conversations among friends, strangers, and colleagues in the mobile generation. The conversations are based around rooms. Rooms can be public or private. Each room can contain one or more conversation topics. Rooms can represent groups, physical locations, or events.
